From Nightmares To Sweet Dreams
by Atrophy-Conception
Summary: Sally wakes up from a nightmare in which Jack has perished. This is set shortly after the movie ends. Short Story. Please Review.


_This is my second story. I do not own Nightmare Before Christmas, or any of the characters displayed in this fic. And by reading it, you'll find this becomes quite obvious. Still, I hope you enjoy it. _

From Nightmares To Sweet Dreams

_Sally woke up in the place that she was afraid to wake up because she had been dreaming so sweetly. She sat up in her bed, and looked out the large window in her room, towards The Pumpkin Kings quarters. His light was off. Sally felt a twinge of panic well up from within her, although she wasn't sure why. Something bad had happened to Jack. She was sure of it. _

_She swung her legs over her bed, and dropped her feet to the cold merciless floor of the room she thought of as her prison. Her prison from the outside world, her prison from the crowd she so desperately wanted to fit with, her prison from Jack. _

_As she stood, she became aware of a faint sorrowful music. She recognized the instruments playing. It was that of the band that always stood by Jack's gate. The tune, however was strange to her. Strange, yet familiar, and nothing like what they usually played. Sally was thinking this over, trying to put her finger on exactly what the tune being played outside her window was, when a shadow fell upon her. _

"_I see your awake, Sally." The doctors croaky voice reached to her across her room like long fingers touching the back of her neck and making her shiver. The walls seamed to get grayer when she heard it, as though all of the color was melting from them. Something wasn't right. Something bad was happening. Sally turned, in a motion as smooth and slow as liquid, and fixed the doctor with a horrified stare. Her eye's were wide. She felt lost and confused, and the words that she began to speak came out without her knowing exactly why she was saying them. _

"_I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I didn't know what kind of trouble it would lead to. I was just doing what he asked me too. I tried to stop it. I really did. I told him it was a bad idea. He wouldn't listen to me."_

"_That's no excuse Sally." The doctor said, his face cold and hard. "You've disobeyed me so many times. You are a wretch, Sally. A treacherous imbecilic WRETCH! I will no longer allow you to have this room, and you will have my compassion and understanding no longer. You've done the unforgivable Sally. Because you didn't try harder, The Pumpkin King is dead." _

_Sally's lips trembled as tears spilled down her cheeks, landing on the dusty floor with a soft sound, that she could hear now because her room had become deathly silent. _

"_No." She said softly, more to herself then the doctor, who was looking at her accusingly. _

"_He isn't dead. He can't be dead. I love him." She said, falling to her knees and weeping openly. "I don't believe you." The doctor laughed bitterly. _

"_You poor, foolish girl. Just look out your window, my dear." Sally looked up at the doctor teary eyed and frightened. Still, She stood, again in what seamed to be slow motion. And even though she did not tell them too, her legs moved slowly towards the window. As she neared it she saw how different the town looked, it was strange in a way she had never seen before. It was very dark everywhere, as though the buildings, the street lamps, even Jacks Tower, could structurally just vanish, flickering off with the flip of a switch. _

_Underneath her window, however, a strange progressing mass of light flooded the worn street. It looked like a burning fire, that would swallow everything it touched, only leaving behind things that would stand in solitude forever, smoking and charred. Upon closer inspection she saw the moving mass was the citizens of Halloween Town, and the illusion of fire came from hundreds of long thin candles being held in their outstretched hands, claws, branches, and limbs. In the center of the group was one place that was very dark, darker then the night. It made a strange shape, like a long thin rectangle, that got thin at one side and larger at the other. A coffin shape._

_It _was_ a coffin. Sally tried to tear her eyes away, but did so unsuccessfully. She could not help but look. She could not help but see the long thin form lying within that coffin, arms crossed in a morbid manner, clothes ripped and mangled, the sockets of his eye's filled with nothing. _

_Sally turned away, burying her face in her hands. _

"_No, no, no. It isn't real. It can't be real. It can't be!" The doctor had remained silent throughout this time. He now spoke. His voice held no compassion or concern. His voice did not sound human to Sally at all. _

"_Now you see what you've done." Sally turned away from him, crying softly to herself. _

"_Sally, I would like you to meet someone." The doctor wheeled out of the door way. As he did a tall form that was completely shadowed filled the faint light outside the room. The figure stepped inside the door. Sally saw that it was a woman. On that looked very much like the doctor in her features. She even regarded Sally with the same cool look. _

"_This is my jewel. I have called her Jewel. Quite appropriate I believe." _

_Sally stared at the woman, a mounting dismay welling up inside of her. _

"_You see, Sally, Jewel here is made to be my perfect companion. She is a ample improvement to you. She appreciates me, and does not disobey me. SHE doesn't poison me with Deadly Night Shade. We have decent conversations. Conversations that you could not even comprehend. So, as you can see…I will not be needing you anymore." Sally wiped the tears from her eyes, feeling just a little bit hurt. _

"_But…where will I live?" Sally asked softly. _

"_Ha! Don't misunderstand Sally. You are still mine. I'm moving Jewel into your room. Meanwhile, you will be shut in one of the cabinetss in my lab. I'll let you out sometimes, I suppose. But only for the chores that Neither I myself, Jewel, or Igor wants to do. You will live eternally in the darkness. You will have no one, and there is no way you can ever leave again. But before I shut you within the confines of your new abode…" He said this with a cruel humor. "I am going to take you apart, piece by piece. Your punishment for all you have done is to sit in the cupboard forever, with nothing but the thoughts in your head…I imagine you will eventually go insane…but that will be the only escape you will ever have." _

_Sally stood listening to all of this in horror, her eyes growing larger and larger, and her mind growing more and more unbelieving. This could not be happening. _

"_Jewel my love, escort Sally to the lab. We have a long night ahead of us." _

"_Yes dear." The woman said, her voice sounding very similar to the doctors, with the addition of a bit of a higher note for feminism. Sally found it a very vague womanish quality. _

"_NO!" Sally screamed as she scrambled away from the woman. She stumbled on a floorboard that stuck up from the ground. It seamed to her that even her room had cast her away. Sally landed to the ground with a crash. She looked up as the shadows of her master and his new creation fell upon her. Her countenance filled with grief and horror. _

"_Please don't do this." She begged in the dark. _

_She felt it as the doctor began to slowly dismember her. Pulling her thread, and removing her limbs. Parting her from her body. The whole time she pleaded with him. She begged him to let her go. She begged him to let her go to the crowd, to see if it really had been Jack in that coffin. She begged him until her world was flooded with darkness as the cabinet doors shut. _

_In the darkness she wept for what seamed like hours. When she finally had cried all of the tears she felt she could, she just sat in the silence of solitude. In that silence she found to her surprise that she could still hear the band. At first faintly, then very loudly, as though they were right in her cabinet with her. As the tune played, she began to realize, with terror, what it was…_

_It was the Funeral March. _

In the darkness of the circular single room, that made up Jack's tower, Jack was awoken by a small sound. A sound like a child whimpering in the night, hoping that their parents might hear and comfort them.

He opened his eye's groggily and stared into the darkness for a moment, waiting for his sockets to adjust. The moonlight drifted in from the large windows that lined his wall, setting his morbid decorations alight. In that faint light he saw the vague outline of the person lying beside him.

Jack narrowed his eyes and crept towards Sally slowly, trying not to awaken her. He reached out with a long skeleton hand and touched her face lightly. Her cheeks were wet. She was crying. Jacks face filled with concern. He leaned towards her and brushed a little of her fiery red hair out of her face.

"Sally." He whispered softly, as he did Zero rose his head and peered at Jack from his bed. His nose set Jacks face alight with an orange brilliance.

"Jack." Sally whimpered softly, still in the tangled confines of her dream.

"Wake up Sally." Jack said running his bony fingers down her cheek, while wiping the tears from her eyes with his thumb.

Sally's dream began to fade. It did so without her own awareness. To her, the darkness of the room seamed to match that of her cabinet. When she opened her eyes she was shocked quite badly, looking up into Jacks face, which was burning with an unusually orange light. 'It's the fire from the candles' she thought to herself. 'It's setting his face alight with flame.'

In his bed Zero lowered his head, stuffing it back into the pillow. Jacks face was bathed once again in darkness.

Sally stared up at him a little longer. Her head still fuzzy and thick with the flamboyancy of her passing nightmare.

"Are you alright?" Jack asked, breaking the silence. Sally didn't say anything. Now that her eyes were adjusting she was examining Jacks face with a kind of confusion.

"Sally?" He asked, this time a little more alarmed.

"Jack?" She asked in the silence. To her, her voice sounded strange. It was shaking and faint, so small compared to Jacks.

"Yes? Why are you crying, Sally?" Sally touched her own face at his question and found it was wet. She _had_ been crying. She didn't think it mattered at this moment though, at least, it did not matter to her.

"Are you really here?" She asked, softly. Jack gave her a funny look.

"Of course I am…I live here. What's going on Sally?" Sally sat up and looked around the room. Although she had never been there before tonight, she recognized Jack's Tower from the inside as though she had been living in it her whole life. She looked up at the windows, with their lovely swirls, and the cobwebs, and at the strange and eerie decorations, and in the corner…the thing that confirmed this reality's existence were two boxes and a pile of decorations and trinkets that didn't look like they belonged in there at all. It was all of Jacks Christmas stuff.

She remembered now. She remembered what had happened earlier that night. First their had been Jack's Christmas, which had gone over terribly, then when she had gone to rescue Santa, and had ended up trapped in Oogie Boogies lair, then, what had been the bases of her dream, she had heard that Jack had been "blown to smithereens." At this time she had been strapped with Santa to something that would throw them over into the pot to be boiled in a just a few moments. But Jack had not been dead, He had rescued them and later, on the spiral hill, now snow covered, he had…

Sally wiped her face, which was now filled with relief.

"Sally?" Jack asked again. Sally turned her head to look at him. She saw concern in his face. Sally smiled at him, her eyes filling again with tears. She put her arms around his thin neck and embraced him, burring her face in his shoulder. After a moment Jack returned her embrace…and although still a bit confused, he smiled too.

"What is it Sally?" He asked gently.

"I just had the most horrible nightmare." She said, her voice muffled by Jacks shoulder.

"Well, that's nice…but why are you crying." Sally laughed softly. She parted from him, shaking her head, and once again wiping the tears from her eyes.

"I had a dream that you were dead." She said, her voice lowering to a whisper as she came to the end of the sentence. She found some of her regular shyness creeping back in.

"Oh." Jack said, nodding in understanding. They were both quiet for a moment.

Sally felt Jack touch her chin gently and lift her face to meet his.

"Well, it's gone now…and I'm right here." He said softly. Sally nodded, as her chest exploded with warmth and love. Jack put his long thin arms around her waist and pulled her gently towards him. She went without complaint. Their lips touched and Sally soon found herself lost in a kiss with the Pumpkin King. When they parted a thought went immediately through Sally's head.

'There's no way this could be a dream. You can't make up a kiss like that.'

"Now…" Jack said, while pulling the covers of his bed back over them "…I suggest you get some sleep. What with the slight delay of our Holiday, I have a feeling the mayors going to be calling on me even earlier then usual." Jack grinned, giving Sally a look telling her that although he had found his passion for the holiday again, the thought of being disturbed so early still did not sit well with him. Sally returned his grin.

"Goodnight Sally." Jack said, after getting comfortable.

"Goodnight Jack." Sally returned softly.

After a few moments of building up her confidence Sally moved towards Jack shyly, and put her arms around him. Jack smiled, pulling her closer, and holding her in his arms.

"I love you Jack."

"I love you too Sally."

I couldn't help it. I had to write something else. It's just a short story though, and it took me only a couple of hours so it shouldn't effect the completion of the other one.


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